Afterlife Lessons
by Idrelle Miocovani
Summary: Cedric Diggory really doesn't understand the absurd ways of the afterlife, especially when he runs into a very strange vampire who looks just like him.


**A/N: **This was an entry for a writing challenge on another website. The requirements were to write an insanely crazy fan fic about anything in the Harry Potter Universe with these things included:

- "Never tell me the odds!"  
- Peeves.  
- Bipping (throwing a loaf of bread or other convenient object at someone's head, usually when they are being stupid).  
- an Internet meme reference of some sort (for example, lolcats).  
- lyrics from any song. Ever. Identify it somehow.  
- Voldemort singing his part of the song from The Mysterious Ticking Noise.  
- "We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things."  
- a reference to cake  
- snow  
- Cedric Diggory meeting Edward Cullen

Because of a certain vampire's appearance in this story, I've placed it in the crossover section rather than the normal Harry Potter one. Enjoy!

* * *

**Afterlife Lessons**

When Cedric died, he hadn't known what to expect. He didn't know what he should think or feel or if he should even be doing either of the two, on the account that he was dead. He didn't know if there was Heaven or Hell or even an Afterlife – at seventeen years, he hadn't even considered it that much. He certainly hadn't expected that he would have met his end in a blinding flash of green light in some mysterious graveyard with Harry Potter keeled over at his feet, writhing in pain.

But it was all over in a flash of green light. For a very brief moment amongst the lack of awareness and the darkness, despite the disorientated feeling akin to being knocked off his broomstick by a Bludger during a Quidditch match, he thought he might open his eyes and see the blue-black sky of a dark night and maybe a few tombstones in his peripheral vision for good measure.

The site of his death. Considering he no longer had the proper motor functions of his body due to being dead, it was logical to conclude that he would wake up in the place where he was violently forced to drift off.

Or maybe it wasn't. Who could expect anything after you died? It was all a mystery to be discovered.

It wasn't a very fun mystery, and it really wasn't anything like Cedric could have expected.

The first thing Cedric learned was that there was an afterlife. The second thing he learned – immediately following the first – was that the afterlife was in a continual state of the present moment which was terribly difficult to follow since there was no sense of time. Essentially, anyone who had died or anyone who would die was dead and with him, walking in the afterlife. It was a very difficult thing to get used to, since there were so many people around him who he didn't know, because they had died in the future. He even saw Harry a couple of times after he first arrived (but after he learned how to make jumps between the afterlife and life-life); they had exchanged greetings, Cedric saying that he had just died and asking whether Harry had been killed, too, only to have Harry say that he had lived for many, many decades after the initial incident.

That was Cedric's first major lesson. Try to apply time to the afterlife and you would only end up giving yourself a headache.

Cedric's second major lesson came when he begun to realize that the afterlife had no limits. It could be infinitely big or it could be infinitely small. Whatever he wanted it to be, it could be. If he wanted his afterlife to be painted bright fuchsia, it could be bright fuchsia – only then he would hear the complaints whenever he went to talk to another person (or was it spirit? What did you become when you arrived in the afterlife?) and they would be enclosed in his bright fuchsia world until he finished speaking to them.

Cedric had no idea why he chose fuchsia when he first tried this out. It seemed like a good decision at the time.

Another limit was that you could talk to as many people as you wanted to, all at once – or as few people as you wanted. You could float inbetween conversations, you could close yourself off. No matter what you wanted, it could happen. The afterlife was there for you to meld to your wishes. It was like a fantastic dream where the impossible happened – except it was a dream that you could never wake up from, and for some reason, the afterlife always insisted that you turn it into the strangest things. It absolutely resisted anything solid or ordinary.

Perhaps it thought you had had enough of ordinary during your living life.

It took Cedric a great deal of time to learn how to meld the afterlife so it wouldn't automatically turn into a sizzling bubble of messed up colours.

His third lesson was that he had no body. His body was back decaying on Earth. Here in the afterlife, he was literally nothing – unless he melded himself a form out of whatever stuff the afterlife was made of. This was similar to providing an environment; the afterlife also insisted that you should not be human shaped. Sometimes Cedric found himself being a rubber ball. Or a child's stick figure. It took him a very long time to reassemble himself the way his mortal body originally was; except, since time didn't flow properly in the afterlife, it felt like it both took forever and no time at all.

That gave him a headache whenever he thought about it. But he only had the headache because he thought about giving himself a headache, which then only added to him having a headache… It was all terribly confusing. That was why he liked being a rubber ball sometimes. So very uncomplicated.

It didn't matter what form you took; each spirit was an individual. You always knew who you were talking to – if you chose to talk to someone, that was – despite what they looked like.

Eventually, Cedric learned that certain spirits went together very well and that the afterlife actually formed little groups where spirits would hang out together. They had similar ideas, or shapes, in their heads, so it was easy to meld the afterlife into an environment that suited all of them. When Cedric first arrived, he didn't know where he was going. So he wandered, stumbling through the blank, utter whiteness of the afterlife from environment to environment, trying to turn himself from rubber ball into a human person in the process.

It was terribly disorientating.

Eventually, Cedric just had to choose an environment and stick with it for his own dead insanity.

He had ended up in what appeared to be a Muggle ballet studio, lined with walls and walls of mirrors. This was how he had discovered that he was, in fact, a rubber ball, because he sat on the panelled floor, staring at his reflection and rolling back and forth, trying to figure out why – truly – he was a rubber ball and how he could turn himself back into a person.

At the end of the studio, there was a large wooden table. For whatever reasons, there was a water-filled tank balanced on the table. Inside it swam an octopus.

A sign by the tank read "Paul the Octopus" in big, bright red letters. In an even bigger and brighter font underneath, it read, "Never tell me the odds."

"Why?" Cedric Diggory the rubber ball wondered. The octopus gave him a look from inside the tank and then swam away to hide somewhere in the corner.

Cedric sighed – if rubber balls could sigh. "Look, Mr Octopus," he said, "I've got a few questions, starting with the _why the hell am I a rubber ball?_ question. So if you're at all in the mood for answering questions—"

"He's not," an overly melodic and moody voice said. "Paul doesn't answer any questions that don't have to do with a blank versus blank situation."

Cedric the rubber ball rolled around and faced the new arrival. "Who are you? I can't see you."

"Of course you can't see me; I'm a vampire. Being the living undead, I can walk with ease between the afterlife and the living life."

"Oh. How does that work?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"So where are you now, if I can't see you?"

"I'm somewhere inbetween."

"How do you manage that?"

"By being a demon."

"Oh." Cedric rolled across the room. "Maybe you can answer a question for me, then, Demon."

"What?"

"I said, 'Maybe you can answer a question for me, then'!"

"No – _what_ did you just call me?"

"Oh, that. Demon."

"I know I'm a demon!" the voice shouted. "I'm a horrible person! I'm a vampire! I have no soul! I kill and murder, even though I'm a vegetarian vampire—"

"What?"

"—who doesn't eat people and only animals—"

"Then how can you be vegetarian?"

"—and I am cursed to live forever and be beautiful and indestructible, and have all the strength and speed in the world and a supernatural talent for reading minds, and my girlfriend, my beautiful Bella—"

"Wow, that's original."

"—whom I love till death do us part (except, of course, I cannot die, and if she becomes a vampire – which I do not want her to be, as it will ruin her soul – our love will be eternal) is the most beautiful, gorgeous human creature in the world—"

"How can you be vegetarian if you don't eat vegetables?"

"—and when she becomes immortal (because she will force me to make her immortal; our resident psychic has seen it all) all we will do is make passionate love all day because we have the best stamina because we, as vampires, can never tire—"

"… too much information, Merlin. That's disgusting."

"—and we will be cursed souls with no escape, doomed to walk the world looking gorgeous for all eternity!"

"Wow. That sounds horrible. May I remind you that I'm dead and I'm a _bloody rubber ball?"_

"It's so horrible, I must take frequent walks in the afterlife simply to help myself bear the burden of the immortality that I never wanted!"

"Right. Me. Rubber ball. How do we fix this, please? I've been pretty patient here, but I'm getting rather annoyed. Maybe it has to do with the whole being dead thing, but I'm feeling a little bit snarky and irritated, so if you don't shut up and help me out here—"

Suddenly, a person materialized in front of him. He had perfectly styled auburn hair, was wearing the most fashionable Muggle clothes, had perfect, straight white teeth, brilliant amber eyes and a toned, muscular body that most would consider to be the height of perfection —

— and he sparkled. In a dazzling array of blinding lights, the cursed vampire arrived in a flurry of glitter and sparkles that made him almost blinding to look at.

He also happened to look almost exactly like non-rubber-ball-state Cedric himself. Minus the sparkles.

Obviously.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Cedric the rubber ball said.

"It is a pleasure to me you," the vampire said, apparently not hearing him. He extended his hand in greeting. "I am Edward Cullen."

"And how do you expect me to shake your hand when I don't _have hands?"_

Cullen blinked. "Certainly you can make yourself have hands."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah… I'm working on that." Cedric rolled away across the floor. "Listen, can you go stand somewhere else, like maybe a corner? You're blinding me."

"But as a rubber ball, you do not have eyes to be blinded with."

"I'm a bloody rubber ball, but I've still got all my senses and I'm bloody talking to you. I don't think that matters – at all."

"Are you dazzled by my appearance? I find many people are—"

"No. I think I'm going to vomit – which may prove to be difficult, considering my current lack of mouth." Cedric propelled himself in the opposite direction, trying to flee the sparkling vampire. He made it across the ballet studio to the door, but the door was locked and, as a ball, he couldn't get it open.

Not that he wouldn't try.

For what seemed like several long minutes, the rubber ball propelled itself at the door over and over again, trying desperately to get it to open. Cullen sat in a chair by Paul the Octopus' tank, calmly observing Cedric's increasingly ridiculous attempts to get the door to open.

"I have a feeling that this will not work," Cullen said.

"Oh yeah? Try me. I'm a Hufflepuff. We eventually get things to work out."

"What on earth is a Hufflepuff?"

"What on earth is a vegetarian vampire?"

"SOMETHING IMAGINARY!" a loud voice said, blowing a raspberry.

Cedric looked up and saw Peeves – the last person he expected to see (though he was beginning to have to remind himself that nothing was to be expected here in the afterlife) – blow through the door and shatter it into pieces. The Poltergeist was grinning manically and he floated upside down, bouncing around on the ceiling, bellowing a song as loud as he could in a horrible, warbling key.

"_Oh vegetarian vampires_

_Belong only on funeral pyres_

_Where they can burn for all to see!_

_Ignite them and wait_

'_Cause they'll take the bait_

_And then be blown off to sea!"_

Of all the last people – people was used lightly here – to meet in the afterlife. He thought he would have at least gotten away from that…

Cedric was so irritated by this sudden occurrence that he shouted the first thing that popped into his rubbery ball mind: "For the bloody love of Merlin, Peeves, SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Peeves looked around, momentarily confused as to where the voice was coming from. Then he caught sight of the rubber ball and grinned. He blew a raspberry in the direction of the glittering vampire sitting on the chair, and then swooped down and plucked Cedric off the floor.

"_A ball that can talk,_

_Has no business going for a walk!"_

If Cedric had had physical eyes, he would have rolled them. "Damn it, Peeves," he said, "either tell me what's going on and what you're doing here, or put me down and go away!"

"Can't say!" Peeves said in a sing-song voice. "And the ball sounds like the Boy Who Died! Fancy that." He chirped. "Cedric Digger, Champion of Huffler! Turned into a rubber ball, my my!" He clucked is tongue and did a summersault so he was hovering upside down in the air. Hundreds of upside-down Peeveses were reflecting in the mirrors lining the wall. Peeves gazed at his reflection and stuck out his tongue, juggling Cedric the rubber ball from hand to hand.

Cedric was almost getting vertigo, if that were possible. This was a horrible afterlife.

"If you drop me, Peeves—" he warned.

"No can do!" Peeves cackled. "I won't drop you!"

And with that, he drew back his arm and chucked Cedric the rubber ball a far as he could. The mirrors were hurtling towards Cedric at an alarming rate. As the mirror came closer and closer, Cedric saw Cullen's image sitting serenely on the chair.

Cedric desperately wished he had eyes so he could close them before he made impact.

"Oh, damn it…"

He collided with one of the mirrors. Cullen's sparkling reflection was shattered into a million pieces. The glass sprayed forward, and suddenly Cedric rematerialized in his human form, dressed in clothes that were a little too similar to Cullen's for his taste (not that he realized it at that point). He stared at his hands in shock and spun around to see his reflection in one of the unsmashed mirrors, just to be sure.

He slipped on the glass shards and went spiralling into the next mirror over.

"We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things," Peeves commented gleefully as Cedric slammed into the mirror. The Poltergeist cackled once and waved a cheeky goodbye, flipping around and zipping out of sight.

Cedric groaned and turned around. The glass was cracked badly, but at least the full-length mirror wasn't cracked entirely. Plus, he didn't even cut himself. Maybe you couldn't cut yourself in the afterlife. That was a plus.

He stepped back to get a better look – and screamed.

Edward Cullen, the sparkly vampire, was staring back at him – in double. There he was, as clear as day, in the mirror where no vampire had any business of being, not once, but twice over. There was one where Cedric should be, and one behind him, sitting on the chair by Paul the Octopus' tank.

Cedric put a hand to his chin. So did Cullen Number One. Cedric ran his hands through his hair. So did Cullen Number One.

Cullen Number Two observed this phenomenon from his chair, looking completely calm and collected.

Cedric rounded on him.

"Bloody hell," he said, "how in the name of Merlin did I get turned into you?"

"I don't know."

"I don't want to be a… a sparkling vampiric vegetarian Squib!" Cedric shouted. "I'll be damned if I look like you, which I already do and this… _this_ is getting ridiculous!"

Cullen sighed. "But at least you're pretty now."

Cedric fixed him with a sour look. "I'm a pasty-skinned seventeen=year-old with big hair and permanent skin glitter. And what the hell has your voice done to my accent? I'm a bloody American now!"

Cullen shrugged and continued to stare at him, his amber eyes unmoving. It was rather disturbing.

"Okay, you can stop that now, it's creepy."

"It's better to be me," Cullen said, his voice low. He slowly rose from his chair. "At least you're an immortal vampire instead of a dead teenager – and it could be interesting to have two of me around." He fixed Cedric with a stead-fasted, amber-eyed look.

Cedric glared back. "Cullen, you perverse, dirty one hundred and seven-year-old man for even _thinking_ that."

"I'm seventeen!"

"In your head!" Cedric shot back. "You're permanently hormonal, why else would you purposefully inflict the horror of American high school on yourself multiple times? Clearly, you're delusionally insane."

"I know, I can read your thoughts."

"And I can read yours now, too. How else do I know how you met your ditzy girlfriend?"

"Oh right," Cullen said, as if realizing something for the first time, "we're identical. Technically the same person, I suppose."

Cedric cursed and stalked away, nearly vomiting as the sun's rays bounced off his skin, sparkling so much that his eyes hurt. Deciding that he needed to go elsewhere, he walked over to the door his previous rubber ball-self couldn't open, tugged it open and fled into the next room.

Except it wasn't a room – he was outside now, in a forest clearing, knee-deep in snow. And he wasn't even cold.

The octopus' table and tank were still at the end of the clearing, for whatever reason. It looked as though the ballet studio had simply dissolved and replaced itself with this clearing instead – which was a disturbing fact on its own.

Cedric waded through the snow into the middle of the clearing. The sun was out and it was bright. It was making the unbroken surface of the snow sparkle as much as his skin.

Cedric cursed.

"Feel insane yet?" Cullen's voice said from somewhere behind him.

Cedric spun around. "What are you doing here? Go away!"

Cullen was lounging in a tree. "I am you. I didn't follow you here, I came with you. I'm your doppelgänger and you're mine. Disturbed yet? No wait, don't answer that, I can read your mind."

_Then I don't have to talk to you ever again,_ Cedric thought.

"Exactly."

_So don't talk to me!_

"Find," Cullen said. He leaned back in his tree. _"Your mind's in distburia, it's like the darkness in the light. Distburia, am I scaring you tonight? Disturbia, ain't used to be what you like. Disturbia—"_

_You can stop singing any time now. _

"_Disturbia, _by Rihanna," Cullen explained, thankfully ending his dreadful singing. Cedric gave him an annoyed look anyway. "Muggle singer. Very popular in the States and elsewhere. Don't look at me like that, you can read minds now, you should know everything!"

"Right, because you obviously know everything."

"Naturally. I am a hundred and seven, as you've pointed out."

Cedric's eyes narrowed. He suddenly scooped up some snow, packed it into a snowball and hurled it at Cullen as hard as he could. The snowball exploded in Cullen's face and he fell out of his tree, making a large vampire-shaped hole in the snow bank.

"When you haven't got a wand," Cedric said, "use snow."

Cedric could hear Cullen spluttering as he fought to free himself from the snow bank. Cedric watched the vampire as he pushed the snow back and tried to pull himself out, but he hit a tree with his flailing hand, causing another pile of snow to be dumped on to the top of his head.

It buried him completely.

Cedric smirked.

Satisfied for now, he wandered over to the octopus tank at the end of the clearing.

"Hi, Paul," he said, sitting down on the edge of the table. "So, what are you doing here?"

Paul floated in his water.

"Oh really?" Cedric said. "I agree, the afterlife is a funny place."

Paul didn't comment.

"Sparkling vampires and rubber balls and –" Cedric paused. "And cake, apparently."

A cupcake had appeared on the edge of Paul's table, right next to his tank. Or maybe it had always been there and Cedric just hadn't noticed. He picked it up and inspected it.

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _

"Not to mention vampiric doppelgängers," Cedric said, staring at the cupcake. "This icing is really pink," he added.

The pink was fully unappetizing.

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _

"Hey, Paul," Cedric said, "do you hear ticking?"

Paul disappeared in a cloud of ink.

"Great," Cedric said, "I'm talking to an octopus." He put the cupcake down. "I must be hallucinating."

Across the clearing, Cullen's head popped out of the snow.

_Tick. Tick. Tick. _

The cupcake exploded.

Cedric didn't feel a thing, but he saw a wave of snow get blown across the clearing and dump itself on top of Cullen, burying him again.

Cullen smirked.

Sinister laughter echoed behind him.

Cedric turned around.

Out of the trees, a snake-faced, red-eyed, non-sparkly (thank God) man emerged, holding a wand. He was cackling to himself, looking very pleased.

"_Voldemort, Voldemort, ooh Voldy Voldy Voldy Voldemort—"_

Cedric sighed. _Okay, afterlife,_ he thought, _this is one straw too many. _

"OI! Voldemort!"

"Yes?"

Cedric flew at him. Voldemort never saw it coming. A hundred and ninety-five pounds of sparkling vampire doppelgänger came out of nowhere and tackled the Dark Lord to the snow-covered ground. Cedric plucked Voldemort's wand from his hand and kicked a pile of snow on top of him.

"That's for killing me and sending me here in the first place!" he shouted.

Voldemort didn't respond, but a weak voice muttering, "Technically, I didn't kill you…" came floating to Cedric's ears.

He steadfastly ignored it.

"So, Paul," Cedric said, sitting down on the table again, "where were we?"

Paul remained hidden in his cloud of ink.

Cedric tapped the wand against the palm of his hand. "Hey, do you think I could get rid of my annoying vampiric doppelgänger?"

Paul appeared out of his cloud of ink. He floated over to his feeding buckets. One was labelled CEDRIC DIGGORY, the other EDWARD CULLEN.

He stuck a tentacle into the CEDRIC DIGGORY bucket.

"Perfect," Cedric said, leaping off the table. "I'll take that as a yes."

Paul pointed a tentacle at the sign painted on his tank: "Never tell me the odds."

"Yeah, yeah," Cedric said, grinning. "I know."

He walked briskly across the clearing and pulled a struggling Cullen out of the snow bank. "I thought I'd give you a helping hand," he said.

"Thanks," Cullen said. "I appreciate—"

"REDUCTO!"

The spell blasted out of Cedric's wand, right into Cullen's surprised face. Moments later, there was a small fire (conjured with _Incendio)_ at that end of the glade. Cedric happily walked back to the clairvoyant octopus completely doppelgänger-free.

"Well, that was easy," he said. "He really shouldn't have let me read his mind and let me know his only weakness."

Paul stretched out a tentacle and pointed at a completely new sign that had somehow been erected at the bottom of his tank. This one featured a picture of a crying Harry Potter with Cedric's own body, but the caption read: "Oh noes, I haz killed Edward Cullen!"

"Hm," Cedric said. "Very interesting. I guess everyone thing we're the same person." He glanced down, glaring at his sparkling skin. "The afterlife is a little boring and far too random for my tastes, Paul," he said. "Do you think I could cross over to the land of the living and take Cullen's place? Being vampiric now and all. Who can tell the difference?"

Paul waved a tentacle.

"I know you know the difference."

Paul waved two tentacles.

"Hmm, maybe. I think I'll give it a try. I'll be far less irritating than a hormonal hundred and seven-year-old." Cedric got up and stretched his arms above his head. "Anyways, this Bella Swan can't be any worse than Cho…"

Stashing Voldemort's wand away in his pocket and popping his collar, Cedric made his way across the clearing and through the whiteness of the afterlife to find his next destination: Forks, Washington.

_the end_


End file.
